Warner chosen over Manning

ok for those viewers who are not fervent nfl fans, or how might be reading this thread beyond the confines of the continental united states.... quarterbacking is hard. dan marino didn't start out of the gate his rookie season, john elway was benched during his, and troy aikman only managed one win. all of those players are/will be in the nfl hall of fame. there is no reason to get upset about manning starting or not starting at this point. obviously warner is a superbowl winning qb, and if it were my team, i'd throw him out there for the first part of the season too. even though he really does suck.

Carolina Panthers are going to the Super Bowl!

The wheels on the coaching bus go round and round!

i used to loath the redskins too. and then danny came along and bought them. now it's all i can do to summon up a little mild irritation before the cowboys go out and dismantle the hapless 'skins over and over.

The Football Gods reward a Football Nomad.

Notably absent were his gripes about the games chosen by networks... perhaps because he can't criticize those with which the NFL has a partnership? That's a section I look foward to every week, because every week I am forced to watch utterly horrible games because I can't get Sunday Ticket here. no jabs at danny snyder/steve spurrier either. (the sunday ticket riff is one of my favorite gags, too)

i had a college class at ou with highly touted, but backup, quarterback eric mitchell. for our final, the professor left the room and jamelle holloway, the ou starting qb, came in and proctored the test. you can decide for yourself if we all cheated like crazy.

Pro Football Overtime

jackhererra: agreed. if you don't want to lose without touching the ball in overtime, upgrade your kickoff specialist and defense. that said, i'll support just getting rid of the coin flip and kickoff for overtime, if that prevents montrosities like the college ot system, or automatically giving the ot kicking team an offensive series. the team with the ball at the end of regulation keeps it, at the same position on the field. what could be simpler?

Corey Dillon Wants Out.

Dillon skipped the first voluntary minicamp under Lewis, and was the only regular to show up late for training camp. Lewis has urged him to talk to the media regularly, but has been rebuffed. from here. just what the cowboys need, a talented, lazy, malcontent. give me troy hambrick, anyday. he might not get 100 yards a game, but he'll stick his helmet on a linebacker to pick up the blitz, or block for the fullback, or do whatever the heck is neccessary for the team to be successful.

Hell freezes over!

owillis: Congrats to the Bucs for bringing the Lombardi back to its proper home in the NFC.ttrendel: Any team that would pick up Romanowski deserves to get it's ass handed to them every time.Grey: An eloquent "fuck you, Al Davis" from Gruden. Congrats, Bucs. w0rd.

Hell freezes over!

Challenges were wasted on what should have been obvious calls michaels and madden were harping on wasting challenges early but they never addressed (ok, i turned them mostly off by the end of the first quarter so they may have gotten around to it....) why do you lose an ability to challenge when a call is reversed? it's silly. give a team two, and they lose one for each challenge that isn't reversed. why penalize a team for overturning a bad call.

Hell freezes over!

congrats to the bucs. you could see what was up from the first couple of raiders series. gannon drops back, looks to fire the west coast 5 yard pass, but the bucs have a man right on top of his primary receiver. gannon has to pull the ball down and look for his number two guy. before he can actually get around to doing that, one of the bucs lineman eats his lunch. in the second quarter, still very much in the game, the preceding scenario plays out again. only this time the bucs line doesn't eat gannon's lunch when the primary receiver is covered. but gannon, now appearing to be shellshocked, automatically *ducks* his his head/shoulders into a defensive position even though he isn't close to being hit. he realises he wasn't in trouble and straightens to throw. and then, naturally gets sacked. i love defense.

Would Parcells get more for his soul if he put it up on Ebay?

"It wasn't enough to get cut by Buddy Ryan. He had to try to knock me out of the game. That tells you what kind of man Buddy Ryan is," said Zendejas, who never had another opportunity to kick in Thursday's game. He said he wasn't sure whether he would have been able to kick. those cowboys sucked too.

interestingly, esera has duet with singer suzy k available. i'm glad he was able to finally talk about his real self. but i can't imagine anyone being able to come out while currenting playing, and still being able to keep their job in the nfl.

BCS Standings are out.

did you see ou against iowa st this weekend? of course they can give miami more than they want to handle. also, the bcs sucks rally monkey nads. we need a playoff. 8 teams if neccessary. 16 would be perfect. and get rid of stupid overtime system. it reeks.

Angels Win! Angels Win!

realgrass.

etagloh: that wording is straight from realgrass. but nevertheless, i stand corrected. and while i'm admitting to my errors, my previous link to the rundown should have pointed here. and you can't deep link to dallascowboys.com (which i did in the fpp)

realgrass.

There ain't no Lions fans in Europe,

"last week was like your junior high girlfriend breaking up with you and you get this sick feeeling in your stomach. This week, it's like a nightmare. somebody please turn the lights on and and shake me. that is the feeling you have." --ram te ernie conwell. maybe ernie should stick to dating high school girls.

Maddox or Kordell?

Time to play the freshmen.

i don't have a link handy, but i'm fairly sure i read in a daily newspaper that the oklahoma sooners have also played an inordinate amout of freshman. the coaches would like to have 5th year seniors on the field, but the reality of the situation is that a truly talented player will be gone before then.

Marino in '84. Bledsoe in '02.

How to Fix Football

1: he's wrong about limiting instant replay. but only because it should be eliminated entirely. horrible, gutwrenching and incorrect calls are part what makes sports great. 2: the extra point is just fine. now the nfl allows teams to try for a two-pointer, there isn't an real argument. 3: the solution isn't quite right, but the problem is very real. i have a solution in mind, but i'm saving it for a column. (yea, right) 4. the sudden death format is perfect. i can't agree with corpse about the college rule. for pete's sake, they line up on the 25 and the points they score count in the record book. total and complete bs. they should give the winner of a college overtime 1 official point. 5: i used to care a little, but now i don't. 6: i never cared and still don't. 7: what problem is he trying to solve here? i don't get it. if more long field goal attempts are what you want, reverse the rule so the defense takes over from the line of scrimmage instead of the spot of the kick, when one is missed. 8: this just lets me identify who the real idiots are. hint: stopping a runner after a 7 yard gain on 1st down, and then pounding your chest at your sideline is one way. 9: i'd rather see the owners down there, than up in their luxury box. heck, maybe one of them will get a knee rolled up on when a play drifts out of bounds. 10: that's what college football, especially the smaller schools, is for. go see northeast [your state here] tech play next weekend. you'll probably enjoy it. i thought salmacis ideas were much better. not for the nfl, mind you. but i could easily see a pro league of some sort adopt those ideas.

Loss leaves Cowboys in state of shock.

the texans had 5 rookies starting on offense. including the qb. the dallas defense mostly handled them, but didn't force the texans into many mistakes, and gave up several crucial, big plays. against 5, sometimes 6, rookies. but it wasn't the dallas defense that lost the game. the offense was, in a word, pathetic. the o-line, supposedly a strength of the team, got beaten consistently, including giving up a sack for a safety with the game on the line. when carter had time to throw, he was just as likely to throw it to the texans as his own guys. of carter's 17 incompletions, 12 of them were touched by the defense. aaron glenn seemed like he could have had 4 or 5 interceptions all by himself if he would just hang on to the ball. despite the tough coverage by the corners, the cowboys never attempted to go to the tight end. even worse, dallas never tried to exploit carter's quick feet with a timely draw or scramble. yes, vito, expansion is different now from when tampa bay and seattle came into the league. and carr is now a (and in the future will be a far) better qb than carter. i even think the texans will suprise a few more teams this year. but that doesn't take away from the cowboys performance. this was the the year they thought they would show improvement. maybe even challenge for a playoff position (not my opinion. i was thinking 7-9/8-8) now the cowboys face tennessee, philadelphia, st. louis, and the giants. winning even 1 of those games will be difficult. i'll be cheering each week, but i don't expect anything other than 0-5.

Longer College Football Season

But do the benefits outweigh the costs? well, since the season is longer, that probably means the university's will have to pay more for all kinds of things, but i'm pretty sure the costs of those will be covered by the extra revenue lengthening the season brings.

is anyone watching this show, outside of dallas cowboys fans? i don't have hbo. when i (sporadically) check my favorite p2p networks, i haven't seen any episodes available. fyi: i wonder if flowers will get another chance, now that wr rocket ismail lost for 2002 season.

"'So, is it true that if a woman puts K-Y jelly in her vagina, it'll, like, burn up a condom?''

Kendrell Bell, a Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker, tells of his great awakening to the verities of income tax: ''I got a million-dollar signing bonus. But then I got the check, and it was only $624,000. I thought, Oh, well, I'll get the other half later. Then I found out that's all there was. I thought, They can't do this to me. Then I got on the Internet and I found out they can.''

"The Football Project

historical football stats have (ahem, historically) been very hard to locate. i'm an avid football stat person, a strat-o-matic geek. i found the football reference (which the prospectus links to, awhile back. you can download some raw data there and play around with it. excellent link. and i was trying to save some money this month.

The New Hall Of Famers

New faces are Marcus Allen and Gary Zimmerman, the offensive tackle. Allen would be a maybe on my chart, depending on who he's up against. marcus allen is a maybe? a maybe? get real, dr.z. and it's shameful that bob hayes isn't in yet. maybe next year.

it doesn't matter who the 'skins play at qb this year, as they are all underqualified/underexperienced/undertalented. an instructive example would be last year's dallas cowboys. without adequate performance at quarterback, the entire season is lost. fyi: the cowboys have yet to solve this problem, too. 6-10, 7-9, for both clubs.

Sports Fantasy Is Catching Up With Reality

and yet they can't make a single, not one, decent football game for the console. everything is arcade style, with simulation either completely forgotten, or if it exists, generating woefully erroneous gameplay. everyone touting madden -- yes, i mean you too owillis, is simply wrong. madden football is an interesting experiment, but in the end the real life player has *way* too much control over the performance of individual runners, tacklers, passers, et al. the game, like the supreme court [every good rant has to throw a shot at bush in, don't you think?], is completely compromised. actual understanding and real game savvy is subsumed by button punching ablility. you might as well be playing atari football. give me some strat-o-matic and the dice anyday. off tackle right, joe morris, guessed wrong. no men in the zone -- anyone, anyone?

inactive - you take marino, i'll take fouts. active - actually bledsoe has won a superbowl. just not as a starter. looking over the qb stats from last year, there doesn't seem to be a really great qb who lacks a ring. brunell would probably be my pick, followed by manning and then gannon. i drew the line at needing 4 full seasons to qualify. mcnabb, culpepper and garcia haven't put in time for me to consider them yet.

Ted Williams was baseball's greatest hitter

i used to listen to the cbs radio nfl broadcasts during my stint as a pizza delivery driver. jack buck was simply terrific and i found myself slacking during a pizza run, just to catch a few more minutes of his broadcast, whether i cared about the game or not. brilliant indeed. yes, that's why you pizza was late. you weren't going to tip me anyway you cheap bastard.

Realigning college leagues.

so nebraska has to contend with tennessee notre dame and colorado, oklahoma must face texas, texas a&m and kansas state. yet miami and florida state get a complete pass, with basically just the same ole crappy big east/acc schedule. no thanks.

Ten Reasons Why the Nets Will Win the 2002 NBA Finals.

I hate the Lakers. I want them to just finish this up quickly so I can forget this past season. hasn't next season started already? i could swear i saw some pre-season games on espn2 last night. grrr...no football until august. grumble gripe grumble

Venus, Serena Williams and Capriati advance to Semis.

[link]"One answer to why public interest in men's tennis has been on the wane in recent years is an essential and unpretty thugishness about the power-baseline style that's become dominant on the tour. Watch Agassi closely sometime...he's amazingly absent of finesse, with movements that look more like a heavy-metal musician's than an athlete's...what a top PBer really resembles is film of the old Soviet Union putting down a rebellion. It's awesome, but brutally so, with a grinding, faceless quality about its power that renders that power curiously dull and empty." david foster wallace. (originally a magazine article - republished in a supposedly fun thing i'll never do again)

Yankees Suck

Major Project?

you bet they got a good deal, outside c. he led then to a super bowl appearance of his own, and provided valuable help in their championship this year. he was in several pro bowls, and defensively, opponenets had to take into account they were facing a top tier qb.

i like how trotter specifically wanted to sign with a nfc east team after whatever it was that ended up happening in philly. bitter? a tad. a terrific linebacking crew, although my thought is that armstead will provide more value from leadership than actual playmaking ability. this should spell the end of the soft in the middle defense the 'skins have suffered though.